ANTOnline.com - Aiptek, Inc. MZDV Aiptek MZ-DV-MPEG4 Camcorder w/3x Optical Zoom

Customer Reviews

Reviewed on 2008-07-13

Great Camcorder for travel
My husband and I recently purchased this camcorder and used it on a road trip. Having never purchased a camcorder before it's functions were very easy to figure out. We used it for inside a museum which it did very well with and for moving car shots. The sound quality is very good and best of all it is small enough that you don't need some giant gaudy camera bag for. Most of the time I kept it zipped in my coat pocket! The only thing that was cumbersome is when you open the screen to begin recording it takes about 20 seconds to be up and running so you need to plan your recording ahead of time.

Reviewed on 2007-12-28

It's good for what I do.
I got this as a Christmas present from my parents. And it's perfect for what I use it for! I usually like to take short clips of my family, friends, or whatever and make them into slideshows that are viewable on Youtube. This camera is compact, the buttons and menu are easy to navigate. I'm not too fond of the way the microphone picks up the sound when you zoom, but I usually play over the sound with music. Not too big of a problem there. I edit my clips on a Mac, so I have to take one extra (but not too complicated) step to convert the ASF files to a Quicktime file. All in all, I'm very happy with this product and hope to have it for years to come!

Reviewed on 2007-12-10

Just awful
All I wanted when I bought this camera was something easy to use every now and then, sadly this camera fails so bad that I'm looking for something new now. I go to conventions every now and then and like to snap shots while there, however this becomes an issue with this particular camera. It may be that I'm not doing something (even though I've fiddled with all the controls) anyway when trying to film in areas with lots of people the video comes out awful. The camera attempts to focus on everything or something and you end up with all these blurs of light moving around on screen.

Then if you try to take stationary pictures your target must remain perfectly still or there will be a blurred effect to the picture. Another annoying thing about the pictures is how long it takes to take a single one. First you have to wait for the camera to focus, then you must hold down the button for a second or two, THEN after the camera makes the sound to let you know the picture is taken you must keep the camera aimed at your target or it will blur. If you are trying to take a picture of someone who is in a hurry good luck keeping them still that long.

I didn't expect this camera to be top of the line and ignored the bad reviews because of it's cheap price, however I seriously wish I had spent the extra money for an overall better camera, the only plus for this thing is that it's durable and easy to carry.

Reviewed on 2007-04-09

For what you pay for
I think it is very much worth it, function for the dollar, I listen to loud music, and I am very active, i use this for mp3, snapping photo's of my buddies, the lithium ion battery lasts a while for what I use it for "on the go" when i plug it into the pc it charges as i load the photo's so, that is nice. I purchased the previous version's and they took quite the beating. I stick with this brand of camera's for ease of use. Had it going with no directions, read up for the advanced functions.
I say they did a great job.

Only con is the little door connector, seems flimsy, but even with my abuse is still there. If you own one, you know.

Reviewed on 2007-03-27

Not bad - even for Mac
I bought this camera for backpacking, where size and space is critical and any equipment is subject to harsh conditions so expensive cameras can be a bad idea.

My main computer is a Mac, so I had some reservations about the MZ-DV, since it uses Microsoft's proprietary ASF video format. That's right: it says "MPEG-4", and MPEG-4 is indeed based on QuickTime, but the MPEG-4 standard is implemented as more of a framework than a specific codec, so any vendor who doesn't like to play ball with open standards (sound like our friends in Redmond?) can make their own proprietary variants and it's left to the consumer to sort out the confusion.

Fortunately, I found a handy little software tool called EasyWMV which is dirt cheap and does a great job of easily converting ASF files for use on a Mac with any QuickTime-based program like iMovie.

And the photo format is JPEG, requiring no conversion at all to use on any computer.

I've only had the camera a couple days, but so far it seems a good value for what it does. With all of its features at such a low price it isn't best-of-breed with any one of them, but to have them all in one convenient device is pretty nifty, and the folks at Aiptek have done a competent job with this model.

The quality of low-light video is as reported by the others here: There is a low-light setting, and it's good for pictures but the video is indeed of much lower quality. But in all fairness, I've not seen any hybrid camcorder that didn't have similar issues. You'd have to go up in price and abandon other features if shooting in low-light conditions is important to you.

So far the only limitation I've seen is the one disclosed on the packaging: when mounted on a Mac, the camera acts as a read-only volume. This means you can't load MP3s into it, or use it as a portable drive. I've written Aiptek technical support on this, and if I learn anything useful I'll post it here. I also run Windows under Parallels, and have no trouble loading MP3s and other files into the camera from there.

But aside from the download limitation, everything else on the camera works a treat, with very intuitive controls that often provide multiple ways to change modes conveniently. And with EasyWMV, it's a breeze to use video from it on my MacBook.

I would rate it higher, at least a 4, if I was using Windows primarily. But even for Mac users, if you need something inexpensive that offers these features, I shopped around and couldn't find a better model.

Electronics » Camera & Photo » Camcorders » Under 10x Optical Zoom

Aiptek MZ-DV-MPEG4 Camcorder w/3x Optical Zoom

$155.50

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